Lookalikes: Kate Moss and the original wild child Batty May (Image: PA)

Share

Get daily updates directly to your inbox

Thank you for subscribing!

Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email

She had the supermodel looks of Kate Moss , took more drugs than tragic Amy Winehouse, outraged more people than Rihanna and had more husbands than Katie Price.

Betty May Golding was the original wild child, reports the Sunday People – a singer and dancer who had a string of lovers, bewitched some of the world’s greatest artists, became a gangster’s moll, had a taste for violence and hung out with devil-worshippers.

Despite her extraordinary life, Betty is now a largely forgotten figure.

But a new musical aims to change that, telling how she rose from the squalor of an East End slum to become an international socialite known as the Tiger Woman.

What makes her so amazing is that she ­rampaged through high society not in the ­swinging 60s but almost 100 years ago.

And her defiantly wayward antics make today’s hellraisers look like paragons of virtue.

In 1929 Betty turned her story into a ­sensational book, which is being reissued this week to ­coincide with a new musical about her life.

She told how she had always courted scandal and said: “I have not cared what the world thought of me and as a result what it thought has often not been very kind... I have often lived only for pleasure and excitement.”

Betty was born into extreme poverty in Canning Town in 1895.

Her father abandoned the family when she was a toddler.

And before she was ten she found the body of a pregnant neighbour hanging from a hook.

The woman had killed herself after surprising her husband in bed with her sister.

Betty wrote: “Her face was purple and her eyes bulged like a fish’s. It was rather awful.”

Her penniless mum sent her to live with her father but the youngster was palmed off on an aunt after her dad was sent to jail.

As a teenager Betty began an affair with one of her teachers at school.

She recalled: “I can hardly say, in the light of what I have learnt since, that we were in love.

“At least perhaps he was. Certainly I was fond of him.”

But the relationship was quickly rumbled – and all hell broke loose.

Betty said: “There was a great deal of fuss and it was made clear to me that unless the ­friendship came to an end it would be the schoolmaster who would be made to suffer.

“After a rather tearful scene with my aunt I was packed off with a few pounds.”

Betty went to London, dabbled in prostitution and became a dancer at West End nightspots such as the upmarket Café Royal, where she mixed with top artists including the notorious lothario Augustus John.

She also fell in with a wealthy drifter she called Pretty Pet who took her to Bordeaux.

But he attacked her in their room after a night quaffing super-strong spirit absinthe.

Betty recalled: “He clasped me round the waist, pinning my arms... I struggled with all the strength fear and hate could give me.

"With a supreme effort I succeeded in half-freeing my right arm so that I was enabled to dig my scissors into the fleshy part of his neck.”

She also clubbed him over the head with a pair of metal fire-tongs before fleeing.

Betty found solace in Paris with a ruthless crime boss dubbed the White Panther and moved in with him and his gang of armed robbers.

She was often involved in violent bust-ups and once had to fight off a vicious assault by a girl who was also in the gang.

Her skill with a knife and her knuckles earned her the nickname Tiger Woman.

In one gruesome episode, Betty seduced an Englishman and brought him back to the gang’s lair so they could rob him.

The victim went to the police – and the gang told Betty to find the man again or they would kill her.

She tracked him down and handed him over – and the thugs ordered her to brand him with a red-hot knife.

Betty wrote: “The smell of his burning flesh sickened me but much worse was the expression of utter contempt with which he regarded me just before he fainted.

“I cannot imagine how I was able to do it, for although I have this violent temper, this was done in cold blood.”

Betty did a runner from Paris and returned to London to work as a singer and dancer.